An examination of municipal efforts to manage brownfields redevelopment in Ontario, Canada

Since the mid-1990s, the reuse of brownfield properties for urban intensification has emerged as a core strategy in government efforts to remediate pollution and support renewal, regeneration, and retrofitting. While upper levels of government in Canada engaged in early efforts to devise policies, programs, and funding strategies to support redevelopment, the job of overseeing it has fallen mainly to local governments. This paper investigates the role of municipalitiesin Ontario, Canada’s most populous and industrialized province, in managing and facilitating brownfields redevelopment. Survey data from 43 municipalities, coupled with information gathered from six site visitations and provincial information, reveal that despite common goals, tools, and approaches put forward by Ontario municipalitiesin their Community Improvement Plans, the management of planning, funding, and redevelopment issues continues to be a challenge for many, resulting in some very proficient municipalities and numerous hopeful ones with limited capacity to address this demanding issue.Depuis le milieu des années 1990, la réutilisation des terrains contaminés pour l’intensification urbaine est devenue une stratégie de base dans les efforts du gouvernement pour remédier à la pollution et soutenir le renouvellement, la régénération et la modernisation. Tandis que les paliers de gouvernement supérieurs du Canada ont participé dans les premiers efforts pour concevoir des politiques, des programmes et des stratégies de financement pour soutenir le réaménagement, la tâche de le superviser incombe principalement aux gouvernements municipaux. Ce document examine le rôle des municipalités de l’Ontario, la province la plus peuplée et la plus industrialisée du Canada, dans la gestion et la facilitation du réaménagement des friches contaminées. Les données d’enquête de quarante-trois municipalités, associées aux renseignements recueillis à partir de six visites de sites et aux données provinciales, révèlent que, malgré les objectifs, les outils et les approches communs proposés par les municipalités de l’Ontario dans leurs plans d’amélioration communautaire, la gestion de la planification, du financement et du réaménagement continuent d’être un défi pour de nombreux gouvernements locaux, ce qui fait que certains dirigeants et de nombreux dirigeants pleins d’espoir ont des capacités limitées pour s’attaquer à ce problème difficile

Trying to Smart-In-Up and Cleanup Our Act by Linking Regional Growth Planning, Brownfields Remediation, and Urban Infill in Southern Ontario Cities

The reuse of brownfields as locations for urban intensification has become a core strategy in government sustainability efforts aimed at remediating pollution, curbing sprawl and prioritizing renewal, regeneration, and retrofitting. In Ontario, Canada’s most populous, industrialized, and brownfield-laden province, a suite of progressive policies and programs have been introduced to not only facilitate the assessment and remediation of the brownfields supply, but to also steer development demand away from peripheral greenfields and towards urban brownfields in a manner that considers a wider regional perspective. This article examines the character and extent of brownfields infill development that has taken place in three Ontario cities (Toronto, Waterloo, and Kingston) since the provincial policy shift in the early 2000s. Using property assessment data and cleanup records, the research finds that redevelopment activity has been extensive in both scale and character, particularly in Toronto where the real estate market has been strong. While the results are promising in terms of government efforts to promote smarter growth that builds “in and up” instead of out, they also reveal that government could be doing more to facilitate redevelopment and influence its sustainability character, particularly in weaker markets

From Brown Liability to Green Opportunity: Reinventing Urban Landscapes

Whether they are growing, shrinking, or just standing their ground, cities throughout the United States are looking for ways to reinvent and reinvigorate their urban landscapes. More and more, planners are employing urban greening strategies as tools to enhance the quality of life and create more sustainable metropolitan environments. This is especially true in places that have suffered the consequences of deindustrialization and economic decline over the past 50 years. This paper begins by briefly discussing the evolution of urban greening and the vast array of associated benefits. It then examines expanding efforts to use brownfield sites as opportunity spaces for greening, focusing on project types, planning activities, stakeholder involvement, and redevelopment outcomes. The paper ends with some key lessons from the field that can help planning professionals realize a greener future for our nation’s cities

Sufficiency of hypoxia-inducible 2-oxoglutarate dioxygenases to block chemical oxidative stress-induced differentiation of human embryonic stem cells

Hypoxia benefits undifferentiated pluripotent stem cell renewal, and 2-oxoglutarate (2OG) dioxygenases have been implicated in pluripotent stem cell induction and renewal. We show in human embryonic stem cells (hESC) that an ambient oxygen-induced oxidative stress response elicited by culture in a hypoxic atmosphere (0.5% O2) correlates with the expression of 2OG dioxygenases, which oxidise DNA (TET1, 2, 3) and histone H3 (KDM4C), the former reflected by elevation in genomic 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC). siRNA-mediated targeting of KDM4C and TET1–3 induces hESC differentiation. Under ambient atmospheric oxygen (21% O2), exposure to a low inhibitory concentration of sodium arsenite (NaAsO2, IC10), as a model of chemically-induced oxidative stress, suppresses antioxidant gene expression, reduces mitochondrial membrane potential and induces hESC differentiation. Co-administration of the antioxidant N-acetyl-L-cysteine promoted anti-oxidant, pluripotency and 2OG dioxygenase gene expression, elevated genomic hydroxymethylation and blocked induction of differentiation. Transient ectopic expression of KDM4C or TET1 in ambient atmospheric oxygen achieved the same. Our study substantiates a role for 2OG-dependent dioxygenases in hypoxia's promotion of undifferentiated hESC self-renewal

Part Three: Restoring Urban Nature: Projects and Process

Part Three: Restoring Urban Nature: Projects and Process -- Restoring Urban Ecology: The New York–New Jersey Metropolitan Area Experience / Steven E. Clemants and Steven N. Handel -- Urban Watershed Management: The Milwaukee River Experience / Laurin N. Sievert -- Green Futures for Industrial Brownfields / Christopher A. De Sousa -- Ecological Citizenship: The Democratic Promise of Restoration / Andrew Light

Observation of strong Kondo like features and co-tunnelling in superparamagnetic GdCl3 filled 1D nanomagnets

Filling of carbon nanotubes has been tailored over years to modify the exceptional properties of the 1-dimensional conductor for magnetic property based applications. Hence, such a system exploits the spin and charge property of the electron, analogous to a quantum conductor coupled to magnetic impurities, which poses an interesting scenario for the study of Kondo physics and related phenomena. We report on the electronic transport properties of MWNTs filled with GdCl3 nanomagnets, which clearly show the co-existence of Kondo correlation and cotunelling within the superparamagnetic limit. The Fermi liquid description of the Kondo effect and the interpolation scheme are fitted to the resistance-temperature dependence yielding the onset of the Kondo scattering temperature and a Kondo temperature for this nanocomposite, respectively. Cotunneling of conduction electrons interfering with a Kondo type interaction has been verified from the exponential decay of the intensity of the fano shaped nonzero bias anomalous conductance peaks, which also show strong resonant features observed only in GdCl3 filled MWNT devices. Hence, these features are explained in terms of magnetic coherence and spin-flip effects along with the competition between the Kondo effect and co-tunneling. This study raises a new possibility of tailoring magnetic interactions for spintronic applications in carbon nanotube systems

Quantum Fokker-Planck Master Equation for Continuous Feedback Control

Measurement and feedback control are essential features of quantum science, with applications ranging from quantum technology protocols to information-to-work conversion in quantum thermodynamics. Theoretical descriptions of feedback control are typically given in terms of stochastic equations requiring numerical solutions, or are limited to linear feedback protocols. Here we present a formalism for continuous quantum measurement and feedback, both linear and nonlinear. Our main result is a quantum Fokker-Planck master equation describing the joint dynamics of a quantum system and a detector with finite bandwidth. For fast measurements, we derive a Markovian master equation for the system alone, amenable to analytical treatment. We illustrate our formalism by investigating two basic information engines, one quantum and one classical